Missiles need to be rebalanced

[Bortas]

As we all know missiles were nerfed to the point of absolute uselessness with 1.1 if I remember correctly.

The reason was that dumb fire missiles used to be vastly overpowered. I was one of the players advocating a rebelance pass for DFs, suggesting to reduce their rate of fire.

Unfortunately, instead of doing just that, FD decided to reduce the effectiveness of all missiles on shields to nil, although heat seeking missiles never needed a nerf, they have never been great, but at least they were fun and somewhat useful.

Now it seems they have fallen into oblivion. I'm still seeing teleporting missiles and such. The reason for these issues not getting any attention is probably that nobody is using them anyway, so nobody cares.

Now we even got another missile launcher as one of the power play weapons, which looks pretty cool, but is actually just fireworks with no practical use which is really sad.


So, FD, please take another look into the balancing of missiles. They just have too much potential of being a really cool and fun weapon, and don't deserve their currant fate. It would also add to the diversity of overall loadouts, when point defense turrets became something to think about again.

 

[GluttonyFang]

I think it's a meta preference things. FD wants the meta to be thermal and kinetics, they don't like missiles.

For me, if I was to balance missiles, give me em' EMP missiles to knock shields down. This way point defense will be much more useful and pilots without them actually have to boost away (evasive maneuvers), turning around with flight assist off to keep momentum and shoot down the missiles manually.

It just adds depth to combat, but unfortunately that is not what they are focusing on right now, I think.

 

[Jordan Cobalt]

Agreed, explosives are useless now. I'd also include frag cannons on the list of things that need a buff. There's barely that many weapons in the game as it is, but about half of them are useless. It's pretty sad.

 

[OldSalt]

Agreed. I used to run two racks of missiles on the class 1 hardpoints on a Cobra and they were useful weapons. I can't remember when I last equipped missiles on any ship which is a shame.

 

[HipToss]

The TORPEDO though

 

[Muetdhiver]

Yeah, missiles are useless because of the lack of shield damage and low amo count.
This will need to be addressed at some point because it's one of those modules that
are not getting used. Which is sad.

Also, why is there no torpedoes rack for class 3 and 4 ?

The drunk missiles from Sirius are fun and pretty, but do more damage to yourself than the target
due to outrageous heat generation (easy to go 300-400%) and no damage to shields. Still, they do
look awesome.

Making dumbfire more akin to the ones in Starlancer would be cool (small size/small range/ok-low damage missiles, racks of 20).

I wish the missile alert would prompt players to go crazy on evasive maneuvres, ECM and stuff. They should be scary.
Now its like, duh : missile, got my shields up so no problem.

 

[Snarfbuckle]

If anything missiles should do plenty of damage when the shields are down.

Thermal : +Shield Damage -Hull Damage
Kinetic: -Shield Damage +Hull Damage
Explosive: --Shield Damage ++Hull Damage

Combined with the extremely limited ammunition and the numerous amount of countermeasures missiles are only there if you LIKE to use them and find them FUN - Usefullness has become a secondary place.

Sure, X4 Medium sized missiles pop a Sidewinder with it's shields down but that is rather abysmnal damage compared what I could do with twin medium beams or twin medium multi-cannons.

Either give us plenty more ammunition or beef up the missiles.

 

[deathmagnet]

Agreed...They need to be rebalanced again. I run a torpedo rack on my ship and I use them because they are fun but they do garbage damage. Something with only 2 ammo should do massive damage to the hull. I am fine with them being useless against shields

 

[Snarfbuckle]

The drunk missiles from Sirius are fun and pretty, but do more damage to yourself than the target
due to outrageous heat generation (easy to go 300-400%) and no damage to shields. Still, they do
look awesome.

Do you have energy in your WEA reservoar?

If you have no energy you get heat instead.

 

[John Stoutbeard]

1. Missiles
2. Torpedos
3. Mines

... all equally useless perhaps? I can't really speak about my experience with them. Tested them earlier, found them useless, never tested them again.
And never been attacked by anyone using either.

 

[777Driver]

Agreed...They need to be rebalanced again. I run a torpedo rack on my ship and I use them because they are fun but they do garbage damage. Something with only 2 ammo should do massive damage to the hull. I am fine with them being useless against shields

Torpedo's still do massive damage, they are lethal against unshielded subsystems.

Now I only equip torpedo's on my Anaconda, it has enough weapon slots to justify them. Perfect for kill shots.

EDIT - Unless the devs reduced damage further in 1.3?

 

[John Stoutbeard]

Torpedo's still do massive damage, they are lethal against unshielded subsystems.

Now I only equip torpedo's on my Anaconda, it has enough weapon slots to justify them. Perfect for kill shots.

EDIT - Unless the devs reduced damage further in 1.3?

Cheers, haven't tested lately. Glad to hear torpedos are balanced. Got to do a new test.

 

[Muetdhiver]

Do you have energy in your WEA reservoar?

If you have no energy you get heat instead.

Ohh, did not know that, got to try then

BTW : the missile rack system in Independance War 2 was really good. One rack would allow you to load 2-5 different missile types,
so you could have some anti shield missiles, some 'mass locking' missiles, 1 remote guided nuclear AOE missile and a bunch of seeker missiles. It was pretty neat and added a lot of utility.

 

[HipToss]

Torpedo's still do massive damage, they are lethal against unshielded subsystems.

Now I only equip torpedo's on my Anaconda, it has enough weapon slots to justify them. Perfect for kill shots.

EDIT - Unless the devs reduced damage further in 1.3?

you put class 2 torps in your larger HP's? Most are afraid of my class 4 PA!

 

[zombieapocalypse]

Agreed, explosives are useless now. I'd also include frag cannons on the list of things that need a buff. There's barely that many weapons in the game as it is, but about half of them are useless. It's pretty sad.

At the very least they need to increase the ammo capacity of frag cannons.

 

[Sendraks]

There's certainly no "fear factor" to a missile being launched compared to what was in the earlier games. However, I'm not sure how FD balance this problem.

If you make missiles do decent damage against shields, then you'll see more people running point defence and EMP to deal with them. At which point, everyone is wasting slots to a vary degree.

If shields are just good against the hull/modules, then there is a surprise and fear element as to what the other pilot might be packing if your shields drop. Do you really want to hang around as your shields fail on the offchance that the other ship is packing a missile launcher or two, ready to launch the moment your shields go down. You already need to be running at that point.

 

[W4rSkuLL]

Missiles should be made dangerous again. Just make SOME hard points able to carry them. Lets say missile launchers need strengthened hard points because they are heavy and launching missiles puts a strain on the hull. Then some ships can carry 1 or maybe max 2 missile launchers. Bring back naval missiles and military ones. Just now missiles are a joke. I want to use them again, at least on one hard point. Make it so that you cant have missile boats. But 1 expensive missile should be able to remove shields and in some cases even one shot some enemies. This will bring back the use for the E.C.M and even missile chaff. It would be great to chaff a missile and loose it, then it comes back at you finding its target again or even you can turn around and shoot it down. If you are an ace pilot. Easy with gimbals though

 

[Zmaj od Bosne]

As we all know missiles were nerfed to the point of absolute uselessness with 1.1 if I remember correctly.The reason was that dumb fire missiles used to be vastly overpowered. I was one of the players advocating a rebelance pass for DFs, suggesting to reduce their rate of fire.Unfortunately, instead of doing just that, FD decided to reduce the effectiveness of all missiles on shields to nil, although heat seeking missiles never needed a nerf, they have never been great, but at least they were fun and somewhat useful.Now it seems they have fallen into oblivion. I'm still seeing teleporting missiles and such. The reason for these issues not getting any attention is probably that nobody is using them anyway, so nobody cares.Now we even got another missile launcher as one of the power play weapons, which looks pretty cool, but is actually just fireworks with no practical use which is really sad.So, FD, please take another look into the balancing of missiles. They just have too much potential of being a really cool and fun weapon, and don't deserve their currant fate. It would also add to the diversity of overall loadouts, when point defense turrets became something to think about again.

I still run heat seeking missiles on small hard points on my ASP. They are fun to use but definitely need upgrades. Especially when it comes to the number of missiles you can carry. You should be able to load more ammo at the cost of cargo space, and that applies to all weapons that require ammo.

 

[Brucolac]

Make missiles deplete shield cell banks?
Make torpedos bypass shields altogether but cannot target subsystems while shields are up?
Every weapon, and every system, should have some sort of viable role in the game, else they are just a waste of time to develop (or earn).

 

[master_xean]

A full volley of torpedos will one shot a python with its shield down.